US based Google the leading Internet search engine company in the world started providing

its services in China in 2000. Though Google soon became the leading search engine in the
Chinese market, it started losing its market share in couple of years.

In China, the Internet content was heavily censored by the government and users searching
on Google's site experienced inordinate delays. By 2005, Chinese search Engine Company
Baidu emerged as the leading internet search company in China. To compete with Baidu,
Google decided to launch a Chinese website - www.google.cn and agreed to censor its
content.

The case discusses the circumstances under which Google was forced to self censor its
content and decided to launch its new site. The case illustrates the role of Chinese
government and the regulations in the Internet market which had an adverse effect on
Google's operations in China.

Issues:

» Examine the problems faced by Google in China

» Study the legal and business environment in the Chinese online media industry

» Evaluate the impact of government regulations on the operations of foreign Internet

companies like Google in China

Contents:

  Page No.
Google Meets 'The Great Firewall' 1
Background Note 2
Google in China 3
Google Loses Market Share 5
The Launch of Google.cn 5
The Road Ahead 6
Exhibits 8

Keywords:

Google, Internet Market in China, Forbidden Searches in China, Baidu, Legal Environment,
Business Environment, Government Regulations, Tiananmen Square, Censoring Content,
Search Engine, Google.cn, AdSense, AdWords, Services of Google, ISPs Filtering Methods

"Our launch of google.cn, though filtered, is a necessary first step toward achieving a
productive presence in a rapidly changing country that will be one of the world's most
important and dynamic for decades to come. To some people, a hard compromise may not
feel as satisfying as a withdrawal on principle, but we believe it's the best way to work
toward the results we all desire."1

- Andrew McLaughlin, Senior Policy Counsel, Google.com in 2006.

"I'm sure Google justifies this by saying it's just a couple of search words that people can't
get to, but it's very difficult for Google to do what they just did and avoid the slippery slope.
The next thing they'll do is ask them to tell them who is searching for 'Taiwan' or
'independence' or 'human rights.' And then it's going to find itself in the position of turning
over the names of dissidents or simply of inquisitive individuals, for imprisonment."2

- Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch3 in 2006

Google Meets 'The Great Firewall'

On January 25, 2006, the US based Google Inc. (Google), the world's largest search engine,
announced that it was ready to censor the content that it made available in China. Google's
Chinese website www.google.cn would be censored by the company itself on the basis of the
instructions of the government. Before this, the government agencies in China used to censor
the content on Google's site that violated the regulations (Refer Exhibit I for regulations
imposed by the Chinese government on the Internet in China). The topics that were sensitive
for the Chinese government included Tiananmen Square, Tibet, the Dalai Lama, Taiwan
independence, human rights and the Falun Gong spiritual movement.
After censorship, users searching for 'Falun Gong spiritual movement', for example, would be
directed to sites and articles condemning the movement; sites that supported the movement
were omitted from the search (Refer Exhibit II for a few of the forbidden searches in China).
Google was of the view that after censoring its content, the company's website would become
easily accessible in China. The company announced, "In order to operate from China, we
have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn, in response to
local law, regulation or policy."4 
Google also announced that users would be informed whenever access was restricted. 

A survey carried out by China Internet Network Information Center 5 in August 2005 revealed
that Google was losing market share to its competitor Baidu.com, which had emerged as the
leading search engine in China.

Google Meets 'The Great Firewall' Contd...

Google had been providing services for users in China through its global search engine
www.google.com, which has its servers in the US. This meant that the content had to pass
through Chinese firewalls, which often stalled the browser and slowed it down. 

The slowdown was also associated with filtering and censorship carried out by the Chinese
government and Internet service providers (ISPs). For this reason, Google decided to place its
servers in China and agreed to self-censor the content and let the users know of it. However,
human rights activists and advocates of freedom of the press all over the world expressed
their displeasure at Google's move.

Reporters without Borders (RWB)6 said, "Google's statements about respecting online

privacy are the height of hypocrisy in view of its strategy in China."7
Background Note

Google was founded by Larry Page (Page) and Sergey Brin (Brin), who were students at
Stanford University, California, USA.

While at Stanford, Page logged on to the World Wide Web, looking for a topic for his
doctoral thesis. He decided to work on the link structure of the Web. He found that though
links from one page to the other could be followed easily, it was important to keep track of
the back-links as well. He started working on backlinks 8 and called his project 'BackRub.'
Brin joined Page in working on BackRub. 

Together, they created a ranking system which ranked the links depending on their
importance. They came up with an algorithm called PageRank,9 which took into account the
number of links to a particular site and the number of links into the linking sites.10 .

Google in China

In September 2000, Google began operating a search engine in Chinese by offering 24

million web pages in Chinese language (Refer Exhibit IV for Internet and Internet search
market in China). By 2002, Google had gained lot of popularity in China owing to its
simplicity and ability to carry out searches effectively.

During that time, the Chinese government was blocking several websites through IP filters
intermittently. The blocking increased during times of heightened security like the
anniversary of Tiananmen Square events, the national party congress, etc. But users of
Google could circumvent the government censorship through cached pages...

Google Loses Market Share

By early 2004, users in China had thought that Google was unreliable and started using
alternative search engines. Elliot Schrage, Vice-president, Global Communications and
Public Affairs of Google said that Google was seven times slower than its rival Baidu and
Google itself was not happy with the way its services were being operated in the country...

The Launch of Google.cn

Google wanted to have a major presence in China. The market was lucrative because of its
size. China had the second largest number of Internet users after the US. Google felt that only
a local presence could help it to provide better and more reliable services to customers. To
operate in China, Google needed an Internet Content Provider license, which required it to
filter its content. In April 2005, after obtaining permission from the Ministry of Information
Industry in China, Google announced the opening of a representative office in Shanghai
(Mainland China), and registered the URL - www.google.com.cn...

The Road Ahead

Analysts opined that with Internet users would have a better experience after the launch of
Google.cn, and Google may once again emerge as the most preferred search engine in the
country. According to findings reported by Keynote Systems in January 2006, Google was in
a strong position to challenge Baidu in the Chinese search engine market. The study
concluded that Chinese users, once they started using Google, preferred it to any other search
engine...

Google's China problem

January 14, 2010
When Google set up shop in China four years ago, it made a trade-off that threatened to run afoul of its "Don't be evil"
motto. The company created a new version of its site -- Google.cn -- that would be operated from servers inside
China, making it more accessible to Internet users there. But in deference to a government demand, Google agreed to
suppress search results from Web pages disfavored by the government. It argued at the time that the new site would
do more good than harm; as a company spokesman told a congressional panel in early 2006, "Even with content
restrictions, a fast and reliable Google.cn is more likely to expand Chinese users' access to information."

This week, Google acknowledged that it might have overestimated the merits of cooperating with the Chinese
government, and pledged to stop censoring Google.cn. The decision is likely to trigger its ouster from China, leaving
Internet users there with sporadic access at best to Google's search engine. The decision came in the wake of a series
of disturbing assaults on Google and more than 30 other companies' sites that apparently were aimed at stealing
corporate secrets and penetrating the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Although the assaults on
Gmail were not successful, Google found during its investigation that undisclosed individuals had been surveilling
dozens of activists' e-mail accounts in China, the U.S. and Europe. Google didn't identify any suspects behind the
intrusions, but its comments and other reports clearly implicated the Beijing government.
Some skeptics suggested that the attacks were merely a pretext and that Google will either make peace with the
regime or withdraw from China for other reasons (such as its limited market share). It could hardly come as a surprise
to Google that the Chinese government invades people’s privacy to maintain its power. And although it's true that
there's been an intensified crackdown on speech and dissentrecently, it's not as if the regime became repressive
overnight.
Yet the rationale for providing a censored search engine has never been morally compelling, and there's even less
justification now for Google to get in bed with the regime. dissentWhen it disclosed the theft of its intellectual
property and the attacks on Gmail users around the world, the company all but accused the Chinese government of
stabbing it in the back. It can't continue to pretend that this regime is a partner it can work with. And make no mistake,
Google's deal with China is a partnership to censor the Net. If Google can't persuade China to let it operate an
unfiltered search engine there, it should pack up its servers and go home.
For many young people in China, Kai-Fu Lee is a celebrity. Not quite on the level of a movie star
like Edison Chen or the singers in the boy band F4, but for a 44-year-old computer scientist who
invariably appears in a somber dark suit, he can really draw a crowd. When Lee, the new head of
operations for Google in China, gave a lecture at one Chinese university about how young Chinese
should compete with the rest of the world, scalpers sold tickets for $60 apiece. At another, an
audience of 8,000 showed up; students sprawled out on the ground, fixed on every word.

It is not hard to see why Lee has become a cult figure for China's high-tech youth. He grew up in
Taiwan, went toColumbia and Carnegie-Mellon and is fluent in both English and Mandarin.
Before joining Google last year, he worked for Apple in California and then for Microsoft in
China; he set up Microsoft Research Asia, the company's research-and-development lab in
Beijing. In person, Lee exudes the cheery optimism of a life coach; last year, he published "Be
Your Personal Best," a fast-selling self-help book that urged Chinese students to adopt the risk-
taking spirit of American capitalism. When he started the Microsoft lab seven years ago, he hired
dozens of China's top graduates; he will now be doing the same thing for Google. "The students of
China are remarkable," he told me when I met him in Beijing in February. "There is a huge desire
to learn."
Lee can sound almost evangelical when he talks about the liberating power of technology. The
Internet, he says, will level the playing field for China's enormous rural underclass; once the
country's small villages are connected, he says, students thousands of miles from Shanghai or
Beijing will be able to access online course materials from M.I.T. or Harvard and fully educate
themselves. Lee has been with Google since only last summer, but he wears the company's
earnest, utopian ethos on his sleeve: when he was hired away from Microsoft, he published a
gushingly emotional open letter on his personal Web site, praising Google's mission to bring
information to the masses. He concluded with an exuberant equation that translates as "youth +
freedom + equality + bottom-up innovation + user focus + don't be evil = The Miracle of Google."

When I visited with Lee, that miracle was being conducted out of a collection of bland offices in
downtown Beijing that looked as if they had been hastily rented and occupied. The small rooms
were full of eager young Chinese men in hip sweatshirts clustered around enormous flat-
panel monitors, debugging code for new Google projects. "The ideals that we uphold here are
really just so important and noble," Lee told me. "How to build stuff that users like, and figure
out how to make money later. And 'Don't Do Evil' " — he was referring to Google's bold motto,
"Don't Be Evil" — "all of those things. I think I've always been an idealist in my heart."

Yet Google's conduct in China has in recent months seemed considerably less than idealistic. In
January, a few months after Lee opened the Beijing office, the company announced it would be
introducing a new version of its search engine for the Chinese market. To obey China's
censorship laws, Google's representatives explained, the company had agreed to purge its search
results of any Web sites disapproved of by the Chinese government, including Web sites
promoting Falun Gong, a government-banned spiritual movement; sites promoting free speech
in China; or any mention of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. If you search for "Tibet" or
"Falun Gong" most anywhere in the world on google.com, you'll find thousands of blog entries,
news items and chat rooms on Chinese repression. Do the same search inside China on google.cn,
and most, if not all, of these links will be gone. Google will have erased them completely.

Google's decision did not go over well in the United States. In February, company executives were
called into Congressional hearings and compared to Nazi collaborators. The company's stock fell,
and protesters waved placards outside the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.
Google wasn't the only American high-tech company to run aground in China in recent months,
nor was it the worst offender. But Google's executives were supposed to be cut from a different
cloth. When the company went public two years ago, its telegenic young founders, Sergey Brin
and Larry Page, wrote in the company's official filing for the Securities and Exchange
Commission that Google is "a company that is trustworthy and interested in the public good."
How could Google square that with making nice with a repressive Chinese regime and the
Communist Party behind it?

It was difficult for me to know exactly how Lee felt about the company's arrangement with
China's authoritarian leadership. As a condition of our meeting, Google had demanded that I not
raise the issue of government relations; only the executives in Google's California head office
were allowed to discuss those matters. But as Lee and I talked about how the Internet was
transforming China, he offered one opinion that seemed telling: the Chinese students he meets
and employs, Lee said, do not hunger for democracy. "People are actually quite free to talk about
the subject," he added, meaning democracy and human rights in China. "I don't think they care
that much. I think people would say: 'Hey, U.S. democracy, that's a good form of government.
Chinese government, good and stable, that's a good form of government. Whatever, as long as I
get to go to my favorite Web site, see my friends, live happily.' " Certainly, he said, the idea of
personal expression, of speaking out publicly, had become vastly more popular among young
Chinese as the Internet had grown and as blogging and online chat had become widespread. "But
I don't think of this as a political statement at all," Lee said. "I think it's more people finding that
they can express themselves and be heard, and they love to keep doing that."

It sounded to me like company spin — a curiously deflated notion of free speech. But spend some
time among China's nascent class of Internet users, as I have these past months, and you begin to
hear such talk somewhat differently. Youth + freedom + equality + don't be evil is an equation
with few constants and many possible solutions. What is freedom, just now, to the Chinese? Are
there gradations of censorship, better and worse ways to limit information? In America, that
seems like an intolerable question — the end of the conversation. But in China, as Google has
discovered, it is just the beginning.

Cultural Differences

Google was not, in fact, a pioneer in China. Yahoo was the first major American Internet
company to enter the market, introducing a Chinese-language version of its site and opening up
an office in Beijing in 1999. Yahoo executives quickly learned how difficult China was to
penetrate — and how baffling the country's cultural barriers can be for Americans. Chinese
businesspeople, for example, rarely rely on e-mail, because they find the idea of leaving messages
to be socially awkward. They prefer live exchanges, which means they gravitate to mobile phones
and short text messages instead. (They avoid voicemail for the same reason; during the weeks I
traveled in China, whenever I called a Chinese executive whose phone was turned off, I would get
a recording saying that the person was simply "unavailable," and the phone would not accept
messages.) The most popular feature of the Internet for Chinese users — much more so than in
the United States — is the online discussion board, where long, rollicking arguments and flame
wars spill on for thousands of comments. Baidu, a Chinese search engine that was introduced in
2001 as an early competitor to Yahoo, capitalized on the national fervor for chat and invented a
tool that allows people to create instant discussion groups based on popular search queries.
When users now search on baidu.com for the name of the Chinese N.B.A. star Yao Ming, for
example, they are shown not only links to news reports on his games; they are also able to join a
chat room with thousands of others and argue about him. Baidu's chat rooms receive as many as
five million posts a day.

As Yahoo found, these cultural nuances made the sites run by American companies feel simply
foreign to Chinese users — and drove them instead to local portals designed by Chinese
entrepreneurs. These sites, including Sina.com andSohu.com, had less useful search engines, but
they were full of links to chat rooms and government-approved Chinese-language news sites.
Nationalist feelings might have played a role, too, in the success Chinese-run sites enjoyed at
Yahoo's expense. "There's now a very strong sense of pride in supporting the local guy," I was told
by Andrew Lih, a Chinese-American professor of media studies at the University of Hong Kong.
Yahoo also was slow to tap into another powerful force in Chinese life: rampant piracy. In most
parts of the West, after the Napster wars, movie and music piracy is increasingly understood as
an illicit activity; it thrives, certainly, but there is now a stigma against taking too much
intellectual content without paying for it. (Hence the success of iTunes.) In China, downloading
illegal copies of music, movies and software is as normal and accepted as checking the weather
online. Baidu's executives discovered early on that many young users were using the Internet to
hunt for pirated MP3's, so the company developed an easy-to-use interface specifically for this
purpose. When I sat in an Internet cafe in Beijing one afternoon, a teenager with mutton-chop
sideburns a few chairs over from me sipped a Coke and watched a samurai movie he'd
downloaded free, while his friends used Baidu to find and pull down pirated tracks from the 50
Cent album "Get Rich or Die Tryin'." Almost one-fifth of Baidu's traffic comes from searching for
unlicensed MP3's that would be illegal in the United States. Robin Li, Baidu's 37-year-old
founder and C.E.O., is unrepentant. "Right now I think that the record companies may not be
happy about the service we are offering," he told me recently, "but I think digital music as a trend
is unstoppable."

At first, Google took a different approach to the Chinese market than Yahoo did. In early 2000,
Google's engineers quietly set about creating a version of their search engine that could
understand character-based Asian languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean. By the end of
the year, they had put up a clunky but serviceable Chinese-language version of Google's home
page. If you were in China and surfed over to google.com in 2001, Google's servers would
automatically detect that you were inside the country and send you to the Chinese-language
search interface, much in the same way google.com serves up a French-language interface to
users in France.

While Baidu appealed to young MP3 hunters, Google became popular with a different set: white-
collar urban professionals in the major Chinese cities, aspirational types who follow Western
styles and sprinkle English words into conversation, a class that prides itself on being
cosmopolitan rather than nationalistic. By pulling in that audience, Google by the end of 2002
achieved a level of success that had eluded Yahoo: it amassed an estimated 25 percent of all
search traffic in China — and it did so working entirely from California, far outside the Chinese
government's sphere of influence.

The Great Firewall

Then on Sept. 3, 2002, Google vanished. Chinese workers arrived at their desks to find that
Google's site was down, with just an error page in its place. The Chinese government had begun
blocking it. China has two main methods for censoring the Web. For companies inside its
borders, the government uses a broad array of penalties and threats to keep content clean. For
Web sites that originate anywhere else in the world, the government has another impressively
effective mechanism of control: what techies call the Great Firewall of China.

When you use the Internet, it often feels placeless and virtual, but it's not. It runs on real wires
that cut through real geographical boundaries. There are three main fiber-optic pipelines in
China, giant underground cables that provide Internet access for the public and connect China to
the rest of the Internet outside its borders. The Chinese government requires the private-sector
companies that run these fiber-optic networks to specially configure "router" switches at the edge
of the network, where signals cross into foreign countries. These routers — some of which are
made by Cisco Systems, an American firm — serve as China's new censors.

If you log onto a computer in downtown Beijing and try to access a Web site hosted on a server in
Chicago, your Internet browser sends out a request for that specific Web page. The request
travels over one of the Chinese pipelines until it hits the routers at the border, where it is then
examined. If the request is for a site that is on the government's blacklist — and there are lots of
them — it won't get through. If the site isn't blocked wholesale, the routers then examine the
words in the requested page's Internet address for blacklisted terms. If the address contains a
word like "falun" or even a coded term like "198964" (which Chinese dissidents use to signify
June 4, 1989, the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre), the router will block the signal. Back
in the Internet cafe, your browser will display an error message. The filters can be surprisingly
sophisticated, allowing certain pages from a site to slip through while blocking others. While I sat
at one Internet cafe in Beijing, the government's filters allowed me to surf the entertainment and
sports pages of the BBC but not its news section.

Google posed a unique problem for the censors: Because the company had no office at the time
inside the country, the Chinese government had no legal authority over it — no ability to demand
that Google voluntarily withhold its search results from Chinese users. And the firewall only half-
worked in Google's case: it could block sites that Google pointed to, but in some cases it would let
slip through a list of search results that included banned sites. So if you were in Shanghai and you
searched for "human rights in China" on google.com, you would get a list of search results that
included Human Rights in China a New York-based organization whose Web site is banned by
the Chinese government. But if you tried to follow the link to hrichina.org, you would get nothing
but an error message; the firewall would block the page. You could see that the banned sites
existed, in other words, but you couldn't reach them. Government officials didn't like this
situation — Chinese citizens were receiving constant reminders that their leaders felt threatened
by certain subjects — but Google was popular enough that they were reluctant to block it entirely.

In 2002, though, something changed, and the Chinese government decided to shut down all
access to Google. Why? Theories abound. Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, whose
responsibilities include government relations, told me that he suspects the block might have been
at the instigation of a competitor — one of its Chinese rivals. Brin is too diplomatic to accuse
anyone by name, but various American Internet executives told me they believe that Baidu has at
times benefited from covert government intervention. A young Chinese-American entrepreneur
in Beijing told me that she had heard that the instigator of the Google blockade was Baidu, which
in 2002 had less than 3 percent of the search market compared with Google's 24 percent.
"Basically, some Baidu people sat down and did hundreds of searches for banned materials on
Google," she said. (Like many Internet businesspeople I spoke with in China, she asked to remain
anonymous, fearing retribution from the authorities.) "Then they took all the results, printed
them up and went to the government and said, 'Look at all this bad stuff you can find on Google!'
That's why the government took Google offline." Baidu strongly denies the charge, and when I
spoke to Guo Liang, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, he
dismissed the idea and argued that Baidu is simply a stronger competitor than Google, with a
better grasp of Chinese desires. Still, many Beijing high-tech insiders told me that it is common
for domestic Internet firms to complain to the government about the illicit content of
competitors, in the hope that their rivals will suffer the consequences. In China, the censorship
regime is not only a political tool; it is also a competitive one — a cudgel that private firms use to
beat one another with.

Self-Discipline Awards

When I visited a dingy Internet cafe one November evening in Beijing, its 120 or so cubicles were
crammed with teenagers. (Because computers and home Internet connections are so expensive,
many of China's mostly young Internet users go online in these cafes, which charge mere pennies
per hour and provide fast broadband — and cold soft drinks.) Everyone in the cafe looked to be
settled in for a long evening of lightweight entertainment: young girls in pink and yellow Hello
Kitty sweaters juggled multiple chat sessions, while upstairs a gang of young Chinese soldiers in
olive-drab coats laughed as they crossed swords in the medieval fantasy game World of Warcraft.
On one wall, next to a faded kung-fu movie poster, was a yellow sign that said, in Chinese
characters, "Do not go to pornographic or illegal Web sites." The warning seemed almost beside
the point; nobody here looked even remotely likely to be hunting for banned Tiananmen Square
retrospectives. I asked the cafe manager, a man with huge aviator glasses and graying hair, how
often his clients try to view illegal content. Not often, he said with a chuckle, and when they do,
it's usually pornography. He said he figured it was the government's job to keep banned materials
inaccessible. "If it's not supposed to be seen," he said, "it's not supposed to be seen."

One mistake Westerners frequently make about China is to assume that the government is furtive
about its censorship. On the contrary, the party is quite matter of fact about it — proud, even.
One American businessman who would speak only anonymously told me the story of attending
an award ceremony last year held by the Internet Society of China for Internet firms, including
the major Internet service providers. "I'm sitting there in the audience for this thing," he
recounted, "and they say, 'And now it's time to award our annual Self-Discipline Awards!' And
they gave 10 companies an award. They gave them a plaque. They shook hands. The minister was
there; he took his picture with each guy. It was basically like Excellence in Self-Censorship — and
everybody in the audience is, like, clapping." Internet censorship in China, this businessman
explained, is presented as a benevolent police function. In January, the Shenzhen Public Security
Bureau created two cuddly little anime-style cartoon "Internet Police" mascots named "Jingjing"
and "Chacha"; each cybercop has a blog and a chat window where Chinese citizens can talk to
them. As a Shenzhen official candidly told The Beijing Youth Daily, "The main function of
Jingjing and Chacha is to intimidate." The article went on to explain that the characters are there
"to publicly remind all Netizens to be conscious of safe and healthy use of the Internet, self-
regulate their online behavior and maintain harmonious Internet order together."

Intimidation and "self-regulation" are, in fact, critical to how the party communicates its
censorship rules to private-sector Internet companies. To be permitted to offer Internet services,
a private company must sign a license agreeing not to circulate content on certain subjects,
including material that "damages the honor or interests of the state" or "disturbs the public order
or destroys public stability" or even "infringes upon national customs and habits." One
prohibition specifically targets "evil cults or superstition," a clear reference to Falun Gong. But
the language is, for the most part, intentionally vague. It leaves wide discretion for any minor
official in China's dozens of regulatory agencies to demand that something he finds offensive be
taken offline.
Government officials from the State Council Information Office convene weekly meetings with
executives from the largest Internet service companies — particularly major portals that run news
stories and host blogs and discussion boards — to discuss what new topics are likely to emerge
that week that the party would prefer be censored. "It's known informally as the 'wind-blowing
meeting' — in other words, which way is the wind blowing," the American businessman told me.
The government officials provide warnings for the days ahead, he explained. "They say: 'There's
this party conference going on this week. There are some foreign dignitaries here on this trip.' "

American Internet firms typically arrive in China expecting the government to hand them an
official blacklist of sites and words they must censor. They quickly discover that no master list
exists. Instead, the government simply insists the firms interpret the vague regulations
themselves. The companies must do a sort of political mind reading and intuit in advance what
the government won't like. Last year, a list circulated online purporting to be a blacklist of words
the government gives to Chinese blogging firms, including "democracy" and "human rights." In
reality, the list had been cobbled together by a young executive at a Chinese blog company. Every
time he received a request to take down a posting, he noted which phrase the government had
objected to, and after a while he developed his own list simply to help his company avoid future
hassles.

The penalty for noncompliance with censorship regulations can be serious. An American public-
relations consultant who recently worked for a major domestic Chinese portal recalled an
afternoon when Chinese police officers burst into the company's offices, dragged the C.E.O. into a
conference room and berated him for failing to block illicit content. "He was pale with fear
afterward," she said. "You have to understand, these people are terrified, just terrified. They're
seriously worried about slipping up and going to jail. They think about it every day they go into
the office."

As a result, Internet executives in China most likely censor far more material than they need to.
The Chinese system relies on a classic psychological truth: self-censorship is always far more
comprehensive than formal censorship. By having each private company assume responsibility
for its corner of the Internet, the government effectively outsources the otherwise unmanageable
task of monitoring the billions of e-mail messages, news stories and chat postings that circulate
every day in China. The government's preferred method seems to be to leave the companies
guessing, then to call up occasionally with angry demands that a Web page be taken down in 24
hours. "It's the panopticon," says James Mulvenon, a China specialist who is the head of a
Washington policy group called the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis. "There's a
randomness to their enforcement, and that creates a sense that they're looking at everything."

The government's filtering, while comprehensive, is not total. One day a banned site might
temporarily be visible, if the routers are overloaded — or if the government suddenly decides to
tolerate it. The next day the site might disappear again. Generally, everyday Internet users react
with caution. They rarely push the government's limits. There are lines that cannot be crossed,
and without actually talking about it much, everyone who lives and breathes Chinese culture
understands more or less where those lines are. This is precisely what makes the environment so
bewildering to American Internet companies. What's allowed? What's not allowed?
In contrast to the confusion most Americans experience, Chinese businessmen would often just
laugh when I asked whether the government's censorship regime was hard to navigate. "I'll tell
you this, it's not more hard than dealing with Sarbanes and Oxley," said Xin Ye, a founding
executive of Sohu.com, one of China's biggest Yahoo-like portals. (He was referring to the
American law that requires publicly held companies to report in depth on their finances.)
Another evening I had drinks in a Shanghai jazz bar with Charles Chao, the president of Sina, the
country's biggest news site. When I asked him how often he needs to remove postings from the
discussion boards on Sina.com, he said, "It's not often." I asked if that meant once a week, once a
month or less often; he demurred. "I don't think I can talk about it," he said. Yet he seemed less
annoyed than amused by my line of questioning. "I don't want to call it censorship," he said. "It's
like in every country: they have a bias. There are taboos you can't talk about in the U.S., and
everyone knows it."

Jack Ma put it more bluntly: "We don't want to annoy the government." Ma is the hyperkinetic
C.E.O. of Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce firm. I met him in November in the lobby of the China
World Hotel in Beijing, just after Ma's company had closed one of the biggest deals in Chinese
Internet history. Yahoo, whose share of the Chinese search-engine market had fallen (according
to one academic survey) to just 2.3 percent, had paid $1 billion to buy 40 percent of Alibaba and
had given Ma complete control over all of Yahoo's services in China, hoping he could do a better
job with it. From his seat on a plush sofa, Ma explained Alibaba's position on online speech.
"Anything that is illegal in China — it's not going to be on our search engine. Something that is
really no good, like Falun Gong?" He shook his head in disgust. "No! We are a business!
Shareholders want to make money. Shareholders want us to make the customer happy.
Meanwhile, we do not have any responsibilities saying we should do this or that political thing.
Forget about it!"

A Bit of a Revolution

Last fall, at a Starbucks in Beijing, I met with China's most famous political blogger. Zhao Jing, a
dapper, handsome 31-year-old in a gray sweater, seemed positively exuberant as he explained
how radically China had changed since the Web arrived in the late 1990's. Before, he said, the
party controlled every single piece of media, but then Chinese began logging onto discussion
boards and setting up blogs, and it was as if a bell jar had lifted. Even if you were still too cautious
to talk about politics, the mere idea that you could publicly state your opinion about anything —
the weather, the local sports scene — felt like a bit of a revolution.

Zhao (who now works in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times) pushed the limits further
than most. After college, he took a job as a hotel receptionist in a small city. He figured that if he
was lucky, he might one day own his own business. When he went online in 1998, though, he
realized that what he really wanted to do was to speak out on political questions. He began
writing essays and posting them on discussion boards. Soon after he started his online writing, a
newspaper editor offered him a job as a reporter.

"This is what the Internet does," Zhao said, flashing a smile. "One week after I went on the
Internet, I had a reputation all over the province. I never thought I could be a writer. But I
realized the problem wasn't me — it was my small town." Zhao lost his reporting job in March
2003 after his paper published an essay by a retired official advocating political reform; the
government retaliated by shutting the paper down. Still eager to write, in December 2004 Zhao
started his blog, hosted on a blogging service with servers in the U.K. His witty pro-free-speech
essays, written under the name Michael Anti, were soon drawing thousands of readers a day. Last
August, the government used the Great Firewall to block his site so that no one in China could
read it; defiant, he switched over to Microsoft's blogging tool, called MSN Spaces. The
government was almost certainly still monitoring his work, but remarkably, he continued writing.
Zhao knew he was safe, he told me, because he knew where to draw the line.

"If you talk every day online and criticize the government, they don't care," he said. "Because it's
just talk. But if you organize — even if it's just three or four people — that's what they crack down
on. It's not speech; it's organizing. People say I'm brave, but I'm not." The Internet brought Zhao
a certain amount of political influence, yet he seemed less excited about the way his blog might
transform the government and more excited about the way it had transformed his sense of
himself. Several young Chinese told me the same thing. If the Internet is bringing a revolution to
China, it is experienced mostly as one of self-actualization: empowerment in a thousand tiny,
everyday ways.

One afternoon I visited with Jiang Jingyi, a 29-year-old Chinese woman who makes her living
selling clothes on eBay. When she opened the door to her apartment in a trendy area of Shanghai,
I felt as if I'd accidentally stumbled into a chic SoHo boutique. Three long racks full of puffy
winter jackets and sweaters dominated the center of the living room, and neat rows of designer
running shoes and boots ringed the walls. As she served me tea in a bedroom with four
computers stacked on a desk, Jiang told me, through an interpreter, that she used to work as a
full-time graphic designer. But she was a shopaholic, she said, and one day decided to take some
of the cheap clothes she'd found at a local factory and put them up for auction online. They sold
quickly, and she made a 30 percent profit. Over the next three months, she sold more and more
clothes, until one one day she realized that her eBay profits were outstripping her weekly
paycheck. She quit her job and began auctioning full time, and now her monthly sales are in
excess of 100,000 yuan, or about $12,000.

"My parents can't understand it," she said with a giggle, as she clicked at the computer to show
me one of her latest auctions, a winter jacket selling for 300 yuan. (Her description of the jacket
translated as "Very trendy! You will look cool!") At the moment, Jiang sells mostly to Chinese in
other major cities, since China's rudimentary banking system and the lack of a reliable credit-
card network mean there is no easy way to receive payments from outside the country. But when
Paypal — eBay's online payment system — finally links the global market with the Chinese
market, she says she will become a small international business, marketing cut-rate clothes
directly to hipsters in London or Los Angeles.

Google never did figure out exactly why it was knocked offline in 2002 by the Chinese
government. The blocking ended abruptly after two weeks, as mysteriously as it had begun. But
even after being unblocked, Google still had troubles. The Great Firewall tends to slow down all
traffic coming into the country from the world outside. About 15 percent of the time, Google was
simply unavailable in China because of data jams. The firewall also began punishing curious
minds: whenever someone inside China searched for a banned term, the firewall would often
retaliate by sending back a command that tricked the user's computer into believing Google itself
had gone dead. For several minutes, the user would be unable to load Google's search page — a
digital slap on the wrist, as it were. For Google, these delays and shutdowns were a real problem,
because search engines like to boast about delivering results in milliseconds. Baidu, Google's
chief Chinese-language rival, had no such problem, because its servers were located on Chinese
soil and thus inside the Great Firewall. Worse, Chinese universities had virtually no access to
foreign Web sites, which meant that impressionable college students — in other countries,
Google's most ardent fans — were flocking instead to Baidu.

Brin and other Google executives realized that the firewall allowed them only two choices, neither
of which they relished. If Google remained aloof and continued to run its Chinese site from
foreign soil, it would face slowdowns from the firewall and the threat of more arbitrary blockades
— and eventually, the loss of market share to Baidu and other Chinese search engines. If it
opened up a Chinese office and moved its servers onto Chinese territory, it would no longer have
to fight to get past the firewall, and its service would speed up. But then Google would be subject
to China's self-censorship laws.

What eventually drove Google into China was a carrot and a stick. Baidu was the stick: by 2005, it
had thoroughly whomped its competition, amassing nearly half of the Chinese search market,
while Google's market share remained stuck at 27 percent. The carrot was Google's halcyon
concept of itself, the belief that merely by improving access to information in an authoritarian
country, it would be doing good. Certainly, the company's officials figured, it could do better than
the local Chinese firms, which acquiesce to the censorship regime with a shrug. Sure, Google
would have to censor the most politically sensitive Web sites — religious groups, democracy
groups, memorials of the Tiananmen Square massacre — along with pornography. But that was
only a tiny percentage of what Chinese users search for on Google. Google could still improve
Chinese citizens' ability to learn about AIDS, environmental problems, avian flu, world markets.
Revenue, Brin told me, wasn't a big part of the equation. He said he thought it would be years
before Google would make much if any profit in China. In fact, he argued, going into China
"wasn't as much a business decision as a decision about getting people information. And we
decided in the end that we should make this compromise."

He and his executives began discussing exactly which compromises they could tolerate. They
decided that — unlike Yahoo and Microsoft — they would not offer e-mail or blogging services
inside China, since that could put them in a position of being forced to censor blog postings or
hand over dissidents' personal information to the secret police. They also decided they would not
take down the existing, unfiltered Chinese-language version of the google.com engine. In essence,
they would offer two search engines in Chinese. Chinese surfers could still access the old
google.com; it would produce uncensored search results, though controversial links would still
lead to dead ends, and the site would be slowed down and occasionally blocked entirely by the
firewall. The new option would be google.cn, where the results would be censored by Google —
but would arrive quickly, reliably and unhindered by the firewall.

Brin and his team decided that if they were going to be forced to censor the results for a search
for "Tiananmen Square," then they would put a disclaimer at the top of the search results on
google.cn explaining that information had been removed in accordance with Chinese law. When
Chinese users search for forbidden terms, Brin said, "they can notice what's missing, or at least
notice the local control." It is precisely the solution you'd expect from a computer scientist: the
absence of information is a type of information. (Google displays similar disclaimers in France
and Germany, where they strip out links to pro-Nazi Web sites.)
Brin's team had one more challenge to confront: how to determine which sites to block? The
Chinese government wouldn't give them a list. So Google's engineers hit on a high-tech solution.
They set up a computer inside China and programmed it to try to access Web sites outside the
country, one after another. If a site was blocked by the firewall, it meant the government
regarded it as illicit — so it became part of Google's blacklist.

The Google executives signed their license to become a Chinese Internet service in December
2005. They never formally sat down with government officials and received permission to put the
disclaimer on censored search results. They simply decided to do it — and waited to see how the
government would react.

The China Storm

Google.cn formally opened on Jan. 27 this year, and human-rights activists immediately logged
onto the new engine to see how it worked. The censorship was indeed comprehensive: the first
page of results for "Falun Gong," they discovered, consisted solely of anti-Falun Gong sites.
Google's image-searching engine — which hunts for pictures — produced equally skewed results.
A query for "Tiananmen Square" omitted many iconic photos of the protest and the crackdown.
Instead, it produced tourism pictures of the square lighted up at night and happy Chinese couples
posing before it.

Google's timing could not have been worse. Google.cn was introduced into a political
environment that was rapidly souring for American high-tech firms in China. Last September,
Reporters Without Borders revealed that in 2004, Yahoo handed over an e-mail user's personal
information to the Chinese government. The user, a business journalist named Shi Tao, had used
his Chinese Yahoo account to leak details of a government document on press restrictions to a
pro-democracy Web site run by Chinese exiles in New York. The government sentenced him to 10
years in prison. Then in December, Microsoft obeyed a government request to delete the writings
of Zhao Jing — the free-speech blogger I'd met with in the fall. What was most remarkable about
this was that Microsoft's blogging service has no servers located in China; the company effectively
allowed China's censors to reach across the ocean and erase data stored on American territory.

Against this backdrop, the Google executives probably expected to appear comparatively
responsible and ethical. But instead, as the China storm swirled around Silicon Valley in
February, Google bore the brunt of it. At the Congressional hearings where the three companies
testified — along with Cisco, makers of hardware used in the Great Firewall — legislators assailed
all the firms, but ripped into Google with particular fire. They asked how a company with the
slogan "Don't Be Evil" could conspire with China's censors. "That makes you a functionary of the
Chinese government," said Jim Leach, an Iowa Republican. "So if this Congress wanted to learn
how to censor, we'd go to you."

Zhao Jing's Rankings

In February, I met with Zhao Jing again, two months after his pro-democracy blog was erased by
Microsoft. We ordered drinks at a faux-Irish pub in downtown Beijing. Zhao was still as energetic
as ever, though he also seemed a bit rueful over his exuberant comments in our last conversation.
"I'm more cynical now," he said. His blog had been killed because of a single post. In December, a
Chinese newspaper editor was fired, and Zhao called for a boycott of the paper. That apparently
crossed the line. It was more than just talk; Zhao had now called for a political action. The
government contacted Microsoft to demand the blog be shuttered, and the company complied —
earning it a chorus of outrage from free-speech advocates in the United States, who accused
Microsoft of having acted without even receiving a formal legal request from the Chinese
government.

Microsoft seemed chastened by the public uproar; at the Congressional hearings, the company's
director of government relations expressed regret. To try to save face, Microsoft executives
pointed out that they had saved a copy of the deleted blog postings and sent them to Zhao. What
they did not mention, Zhao told me, is that they refused to e-mail Zhao the postings; they offered
merely to burn them onto a CD and mail them to any address in the United States Zhao
requested. Microsoft appeared to be so afraid of the Chinese government, Zhao noted with a
bitter laugh, that the company would not even send the banned material into China by mail.
(Microsoft declined to comment for this article.)

I expected Zhao to be much angrier with the American Internet companies than he was. He was
surprisingly philosophical. He ranked the companies in order of ethics, ticking them off with his
fingers. Google, he said, was at the top of the pile. It was genuinely improving the quality of
Chinese information and trying to do its best within a bad system. Microsoft came next; Zhao was
obviously unhappy with its decision, but he said that it had produced such an easy-to-use
blogging tool that, on balance, Microsoft was helping Chinese people to speak publicly. Yahoo
came last, and Zhao had nothing but venom for the company.

"Google has struck a compromise," he said, and compromises are sometimes necessary. Yahoo's
behavior, he added, put it in a different category: "Yahoo is a sellout. Chinese people hate Yahoo."
The difference, Zhao said, was that Yahoo had put individual dissidents in serious danger and
done so apparently without thinking much about the human damage. (Yahoo did not respond to
requests for comment.) Google, by contrast, had avoided introducing any service that could get
someone jailed. It was censoring information, but Zhao considered that a sin of omission, rather
than of commission.

The Distorted Universe

Zhao's moral calculus was striking, not least because it is so foreign to American ways of thinking.
For most Americans, or certainly for most of those who think and write about China, there are no
half-measures in democracy or free speech. A country either fully embraces these principles, or it
disappears down the slippery slope of totalitarianism. But China's bloggers and Internet users
have already lived at the bottom of the slippery slope. From their perspective, the Internet — as
filtered as it is — has already changed Chinese society profoundly. For the younger generation,
especially, it has turned public speech into a daily act. This, ultimately, is the perspective that
Google has adopted, too. And it raises an interesting question: Can an imperfect Internet help
change a society for the better?
One Internet executive I spoke to summed up the conundrum of China's Internet as the
"distorted universe" problem. What happens to people's worldviews when they do a Google
search for Falun Gong and almost exclusively find sites opposed to it, as would happen today on
google.cn? Perhaps they would trust Google's authority and assume there is nothing to be found.
This is the fear of Christopher Smith, the Republican representative who convened the recent
Congressional hearings. "When Google sends you to a Chinese propaganda source on a sensitive
subject, it's got the imprimatur of Google," he told me recently. "And that influences the next
generation — they think, Maybe we can live with this dictatorship. Without your Lech Walesas,
you never get democracy." For Smith, Google's logic is the logic of appeasement. Like the
companies that sought to "engage" with apartheid South Africa, Google's executives are too
dedicated to profits ever to push for serious political change. (Earlier this month, Google's C.E.O.,
Eric Schmidt, visited Kai-Fu Lee in Beijing and told journalists that it would be "arrogant" of
Google to try to change China's censorship laws.)

But perhaps the distorted universe is less of a problem in China, because — as many Chinese
citizens told me — the Chinese people long ago learned to read past the distortions of Communist
propaganda and media control. Guo Liang, the professor at the Chinese social sciences academy,
told me about one revealing encounter. "These guys at Harvard did a study of the Chinese
Internet," Guo said. "I talked to them and asked, 'What were your results?' They said, 'We think
the Chinese government tries to control the Internet.' I just laughed. I said, 'We know that!' "
Google's filtering of its results was not controversial for Guo because it was nothing new.

Andrew Lih, the Chinese-American professor at the University of Hong Kong, said that many in
China take a long-term perspective. "Chinese people have a 5,000-year view of history," he said.
"You ban a Web site, and they're like: 'Oh, give it time. It'll come back.' " Or consider the position
of a group of Chinese Internet geeks trying to get access to Wikipedia, the massive free online
encyclopedia where anyone can write an entry. Currently, all of wikipedia.com is blocked; the
group is trying to convince Wikipedia's overseers to agree to the creation of a sanitized Chinese
version with the potentially illegal entries removed. They argue that this would leave 99.9 percent
of Wikipedia intact, and if that material were freely available in China, they say, it would be a
great boon for China, particularly for underfinanced and isolated schools. (So far, Wikipedia has
said it will not allow the creation of a censored version of the encyclopedia.)

Given how flexible computer code is, there are plenty of ways to distort the universe — to make
its omissions more or less visible. At one point while developing google.cn, Google considered
blocking all sites that refer to controversial topics. A search for Falun Gong in China would
produce no sites in favor of it, but no sites opposing it either. What sort of effect would that have
had? Remember too that when Google introduced its censored google.cn engine, it also left its
original google.com Chinese-language engine online. Which means that any Chinese citizen can
sit in a Net cafe, plug "Tiananmen Square" into each version of the search engine and then
compare the different results — a trick that makes the blacklist somewhat visible. Critics have
suggested that Google should go even further and actually publish its blacklist online in the
United States, making its act of censorship entirely transparent.

The Super Girl Theory

When I spoke to Kai-Fu Lee in Google's Beijing offices, there were moments that to me felt
jarring. One minute he sounded like a freedom-loving Googler, arguing that the Internet
inherently empowers its users. But the next minute he sounded more like Jack Ma of Alibaba —
insisting that the Chinese have no interest in rocking the boat. It is a circular logic I encountered
again and again while talking to China's Internet executives: we don't feel bad about filtering
political results because our users aren't looking for that stuff anyway.

They may be right about their users' behavior. But you could just as easily argue that their users
are incurious because they're cowed. Who would openly search for illegal content in a public
Internet cafe — or even at home, since the government requires that every person with personal
Internet access register his name and phone number with the government for tracking purposes?
It is also possible that the government's crackdown on the Internet could become more intense if
the country's huge population of poor farmers begins agitating online. The government is
reasonably tolerant of well-educated professionals online. But the farmers, upset about corrupt
local officials, are serious activists, and they pose a real threat to Beijing; they staged 70,000
demonstrations in 2004, many of which the government violently suppressed.

In the eyes of critics, Google is lying to itself about the desires of Chinese Internet users and
collaborating with the Communist Party merely to secure a profitable market. To take Lee at his
word is to take a leap of faith: that the Internet, simply through its own inherent properties, will
slowly chip away at the government's ability to control speech, seeding a cultural change that
strongly favors democracy. In this view, there will be no "great man" revolution in China, no Lech
Walesa rallying his oppressed countrymen. Instead, the freedom fighters will be a half-billion
mostly apolitical young Chinese, blogging and chatting about their dates, their favorite bands,
video games — an entire generation that is growing up with public speech as a regular habit.

At one point in our conversation, Lee talked about the "Super Girl" competition televised in
China last year, the country's analogue to "American Idol." Much like the American version of the
show, it featured young women belting out covers of mainstream Western pop songs amid a
blizzard of corporate branding. (The full title of the show was "Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super
Girl Contest," in honor of its sponsor.) In each round, viewers could vote for their favorite
competitor via text message from their mobile phones. As the season ran its course, it began to
resemble a presidential election campaign, with delirious fans setting up Web sites urging voters
to pick their favorite singer. In the final episode, eight million young Chinese used their mobile
phones to vote; the winner was Li Yuchun, a 21-year-old who dressed like a schoolgirl and sang
"Zombie," by the Irish band the Cranberries.

"If you think about a practice for democracy, this is it," Lee said. "People voted for Super Girls.
They loved it — they went out and campaigned." It may not be a revolution, in other words, but it
might be a start.

Google will try to maintain its other operations in China but this is unlikely to succeed. Any
foreign business requires the approval of the Chinese government. Google has shown itself to
be in opposition to the Chinese government — this is an untenable position.
This also means that Google will unlikely be able to take part in joint ventures with others in
China. In early February, Reuters reported that Google is a member of a consortium led by
Disney, to buy a large stake in Bus Online, a large Chinese advertising company.

It’s difficult to see how this deal will go through with Google as a member, if it is an
opponent to the government.

This means Google is barred from the world’s largest and fastest growing Internet market.

The McKinsey Quarterly recently published an article titled: “China’s Internet obsession”
[free registration] looking at the market Google would leave behind.
Here are some extracts:

…by the end of 2009, the number of Internet users in China had touched 384 million, more
than the entire population of the United States. That’s an increase of around 50 percent over
2008.

Moreover, 233 million Chinese—twice as many as in the previous year—accessed the Net on
handheld devices, partly because China’s cellular providers started offering 3G services
widely last year.

People in the 60 largest cities in China spend around 70 percent of their leisure time on the
Internet, according to a survey we conducted in 2009. In smaller towns, the corresponding
number is 50 percent. The PC is fast replacing the TV set as an entertainment hub…

One in five consumers between the ages of 18 and 44 won’t purchase a product or service
without first researching it on the Internet. They shop online at auction Web sites such as
Taobao, paying for products and services with prepaid Taobao cards that the post offices sell
for a small commission. The volume of e-commerce in China more than doubled last year.

Seismic changes are likely to take place in the Chinese consumer market because of the
Internet—and we aren’t talking just about the fact that 50 million Chinese may soon have to
stop using their favorite search engine, Google.

Too bad for Google it is absent from such a vital market. It’s a huge blow to its business and
future strategy.

But it is a bold move.

Google’s founders see the issue of Internet censorship as being important enough to give up
its China business. They’ve put a huge price on the importance of Internet freedoms — and
that’s commendable.

But what future is there for Eric Schmidt? He was unable to separate the issue of Internet
censorship from Google’s business in China. There’s a big division between him and Messrs
Page and Brin.
---
Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China

Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of
laws and administrative regulations. There are no specific laws or regulations which the
censorship follows. In accordance with these laws, more than sixty Internet regulations have
been made by the People's Republic of China (PRC) government, and censorship systems are
vigorously implemented by provincial branches of state-owned ISPs, business companies,
and organizations.

The censorship is not applied in Hong Kong and Macau, as they are special entities
recognized by international treaty vested with independent judicial power[3] and not subject to
most laws of the PRC,[4]including those requiring the restriction of free flow of information.

The escalation of the government's effort to neutralize critical online opinion comes after a
series of large anti-Japanese, anti-pollution, anti-corruption protests, and ethnic riots, many of
which were organized or publicized using instant messaging services, chat rooms, and text
messages. The size of the Internet police is rumored at more than 50,000.[5] Critical comments
appearing on Internet forums, blogs, and major portals such as Sohu and Sina usually are
erased within minutes.

The apparatus of the PRC's Internet repression is considered more extensive and more
advanced than in any other country in the world. The governmental authorities not only block
website content but also monitor the Internet access of individuals. Amnesty
International notes that China “has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and
cyber-dissidents in the world.” The offences of which they are accused include
communicating with groups abroad, opposing the persecution of the Falun Gong, signing
online petitions, and calling for reform and an end to corruption.[6]

Beginning of Regulations

China started its Internet censorship with three regulations issued by China’s central

government. The first regulation was called the Temporary Regulation for the Management
of Computer Information Network International Connection. The regulation was passed in
the 42nd Standing Convention of the State Council on 23 January 1996. It was formally
announced on 1 February 1996, and updated again on 20 May 1997.[7]
The content of the first regulation states, “ No units or individuals are allowed to establish
direct international connection by themselves.” (Item 6) “All direct linkage with the Internet
must go through ChinaNet, GBNet, CERNET or CSTNET. A license is required for anyone
to provide Internet access to users.” (Item 8) The second regulation was the Ordinance for
Security Protection of Computer Information Systems. It was issued on 18 February 1994 by
the State Council to give the responsibility of Internet security protection to the Ministry of
Public Security, which is entitled to “supervise, inspect and guide the security protection
work”, and to “investigate and prosecute illegal criminal cases” (Item 17) [8]

The Ordinance regulation further led to the Security Management Procedures in Internet
Accessing issued by the Ministry of Public Security in December 1997. The regulation
defines "harmful information" and further lists five kinds of harmful activities regarding
Internet usage, “ (1) Intruding in a computer information network or making use of network
resources without authorization; (2) Canceling, altering or adding functions in a computer
information network without authorization; (3) Canceling, altering or adding data and
application software for the purpose of memory, processing, or transmission in a computer
information network without authorization; (4) Intentionally producing, disseminating
destructive software such as a computer virus; (5) Other activities that are harmful to the
security of a computer information network.” (Item 6) [9]

Enforcement

In December 1997, Public Security minister Zhu Entao released new regulations to be
enforced by the ministry that inflict fines for 'defaming government agencies,' 'splitting the
nation,' and leaking "state secrets." Violators could face a fine up to 15,000 Yuan ($1800).
[10]
 Banning appears mostly coordinated and ad hoc, with some sites blocked, yet similar sites
allowed or even blocked in one city and allowed in another. [11] The blocks have often been
lifted for special occasions. For example, The New York Times was unblocked when reporters
in a private interview with Jiang Zemin specifically asked about the block and he replied that
he would look into the matter. During the APECsummit in Shanghai during 2001, normally-
blocked media sources such as CNN, NBC, and the Washington Post became accessible.
Since 2001, the content controls have been further relaxed on a permanent basis, and all three
of the sites previously mentioned are now accessible from mainland China. However, access
to the New York Times was briefly re-blocked as of 20 December 2008, [12] although it has
been accessible for the first months of 2009 as of 17 May. The Chinese-language service
of BBC News is still blocked.

Section Five of the Computer Information Network and Internet Security, Protection, and
Management Regulations approved by the State Council on 11 December 1997 states the
following:

No unit or individual may use the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit the
following kinds of information:

1. Inciting to resist or breaking the Constitution or laws or the implementation of

administrative regulations;
2. Inciting to overthrow the government or the socialist system;
3. Inciting division of the country, harming national unification;
4. Inciting hatred or discrimination among nationalities or harming the unity of the
nationalities;
5. Making falsehoods or distorting the truth, spreading rumors, destroying the order of
society;
6. Promoting feudal superstitions, sexually suggestive material, gambling, violence,
murder;
7. Terrorism or inciting others to criminal activity; openly insulting other people or
distorting the truth to slander people;
8. Injuring the reputation of state organizations;
9. Other activities against the Constitution, laws or administrative regulations.[13]

Golden Shield Project

Main article: Golden Shield Project

The Golden Shield Project (Chinese: 金 盾 工 程 ; Chinese: jīndùn gōngchéng) is owned by

the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China (MPS). It started in 1998,
began processing in November 2003, and the first part of the project passed the national
inspection on 16 November 2006 in Beijing. According to MPS, its purpose is to construct a
communication network and computer information system for police to improve their
capability and efficiency. According to China Central Television (CCTV), by 2002 the
preliminary work of the Golden Shield Project had cost US$800 million (equivalent to RMB
6,400 million or €640 million).[14]
The Golden Shield Project is part of what is sometimes known outside of mainland China as
the Great Firewall of China (in reference both to its role as a network firewall and to the
ancient Great Wall of China). The system blocks content by preventing IP addresses from
being routed through. It consists of standard firewalls and proxy servers at the
Internet gateways. The system also selectively engages in DNS poisoning when particular
sites are requested. The government does not appear to be systematically examining Internet
content, as this appears to be technically impractical.[15]

Researchers at the University of California, Davis and at the University of New Mexico said

that the Great Firewall is not a true firewall since banned material is sometimes able to pass
through several routers or through the entire system without being blocked.[16]

Legislation

In September 2000, the State Council Order No. 292 created the first content restrictions for
Internet content providers. China-based Web sites cannot link to overseas news Web sites or
distribute news from overseas media without separate approval. Only “licensed print
publishers” have the authority to deliver news online. Non-licensed Web sites that wish to
broadcast news may only publish information already released publicly by other news media.
These sites must obtain approval from state information offices and from the State Council
Information Agency. Article 11 of this order mentions that “content providers are responsible
for ensuring the legality of any information disseminated through their services”.[17]

Article 14 gives Chinese officials full access to any kind of sensitive information they wish: “
[...] an IIS provider must keep a copy of its records for 60 days and furnish them to the
relevant state authorities upon demand in accordance to the law.” Finally, article 15 defines
what information must be restricted: “IIS providers shall not produce, reproduce, release, or
disseminate information that: [...] endangers national security, [...]is detrimental to the honor
of the state, [...] undermines social stability, the state’s policy towards religion, [...] other
information prohibited by the law or administrative regulations”.

Censored content

Out of the Top 100 Global Websites, 12 are currently blocked in mainland China.[18]
Research into mainland Chinese Internet censorship has shown that censored websites
included, before the 2008 Summer Olympics:

 Websites related to the persecuted Falun Gong spiritual practice[19][20]

 News sources that often cover some topics such as police brutality, Tiananmen Square
protests of 1989, freedom of speech and democracy sites.[21] These sites include Voice of
America, BBC News, and Yahoo! Hong Kong
 Media sites which may include unregulated content, social commentary or political
commentary censored by the PRC. The ChineseWikipedia and LiveJournal are examples
of such blocked sites.
 Sites hosted by Taiwan's government and major newspaper and television media and
other sites with information on Taiwanese independence[19]
 Web sites that contain obscenity, pornography, or criminal activity.[22][23]
 The website of the separatist Central Tibetan Administration and of the "Voice of
Tibet", an India-based dissident radio organization.[19]
 "Nine Commentaries" or the nine articles that were published
by theepochtimes.com that comment on the Chinese Communist Party[24]

From the above list, the websites of BBC News, the Chinese Wikipedia, Yahoo! Hong Kong
and the Voice of America were later unblocked (as observed on 17 August 2008). However,
Voice of America and Yahoo! Hong Kong returned to their blocked status later on (as
observed on 14 December 2009).

In the second half of 2009 the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter were blocked,
presumably because of containing social or political commentary (similar to LiveJournal in
the above list). An example is the commentary on the deadly riots in Xinjiang in July 2009. [25]
[26]
 Another reason suggested for the block is that activists can utilize them to organize
themselves.[27][28] In 2010 Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo became a forbidden topic
in Chinese media due to his winning the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.[29] Blocked websites are
indexed to a lesser degree, if at all, by some Chinese search engines, such
as Baidu and Google China. This sometimes has considerable impact on search results.
[30]
 According to a Harvard study, at least 18,000 websites are blocked from within mainland
China.[31]According to The New York Times, Google has set up computer systems inside
China that try to access Web sites outside the country. If a site is inaccessible, then it is added
to Google China's blacklist.[32] However, once (if) unblocked, the websites will be reindexed.
Green Dam Youth Escort

A notice[33] issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on 19 May stated

that, as of 1 July 2009, manufacturers must ship machines to be sold in mainland China with
the Green Dam software, and that manufacturers are required to report the number of
machines shipped with the software to the government. [34] The official statement claimed its
objective was "to build a green, healthy, and harmonious online environment, and to avoid
the effects on and the poisoning of our youth's minds by harmful information on the internet".
[35]

A senior official of the Internet Affairs Bureau of the State Council Information Office said
the software's only purpose was "to filter pornography on the Internet". Foreign ministry
official, Qin Gang said the internet had always been open in China and that the government's
administration of it to prevent the spread of harmful information was in accordance with the
law. The general manager of Jinhui, which developed Green Dam, said: "Our software is
simply not capable of spying on Internet users, it is only a filter."[36]

Human rights advocates and internet users in China have been especially critical, saying that
while the software is ostensibly aimed at protecting users against pornography on the web, it
"is really a thinly concealed attempt by the government to expand censorship".[37] Online polls
conducted on Sina, Netease, Tencent and Sohu revealed overwhelming (>70%) rejection of
the software by netizens.[38] A poll conducted by the Southern Metropolis Daily showed
similar results.[39]

On 10 June, the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central

Committee issued an instruction requiring the Chinese media to stop publishing questioning
or critical opinions. The instruction also required online forums to block and remove
"offensive speech evolved from the topic" promptly.[40] Xinhua later commented that "support
[for Green Dam] largely stems from end users, opposing opinions primarily come from a
minority of media outlets and businesses".[41][42]

On 14 August 2009, Li Yizhong, minister of industry and information technology, announced

that computer manufacturers and retailers were no longer obliged to ship the software with
new computers for home or business use, but that schools, internet cafes and other public use
computers would still be required to run the software.

Political censorship
July 2009 Ürümqi riots

Government censors disabled keyword searches for "Urumqi", and blocked access to
Facebook and Twitter as well as local alternatives Fanfou and Youku. Chinese news sites
mainly fed from Xinhua news service for updates about the rioting in Urumqi, comments
features on websites were disabled on some stories to prevent negative posts about the lack of
news.[43] Internet connections in Urumqi were reportedly down.[44] Many unauthorized
postings on local sites and Google were said to have been "harmonised" by government
censors, and emails containing terms related to the riots were blocked or edited to prevent
discord. Nevertheless, images and video footage of the demonstrations and rioting were soon
found posted on Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.[45]

20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square protests

"For reason which everyone knows, and to suppress our extremely unharmonious thoughts,
this site is voluntarily closed for technical maintenance between 3 and 6 June 2009..."
Dusanben.com (translation)

Coinciding with the twentieth anniversary of the government suppression of the pro-

democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, the government ordered internet portals, forums
and discussion groups to shut down their servers for maintenance between 3 and 6 June.[46]

In order to improve the internet content and provide a healthy environment for our netizens,
we have designated 3 to 6 June as the national server maintenance day. This move is widely
supported by the public

“
”

–Chinese censors, South China Morning Post

The Guardian reported that in excess of 300 Chinese sites had "posted increasingly blasé
maintenance messages on the anniversary". A number of websites, such
as Fanfou andWordKu.com, made a veiled protest at state censorship by referring to the date
sarcastically as "Chinese Internet Maintenance Day".[47] The day before the mass shut-down,
Chinese users of Twitter, Hotmail and Flickr, among others, reported a widespread inability
to access these services.[48]

IOC agreement

Initially, the Chinese government, the IOC and Jacques Rogge had stated that Internet access
would not be censored at the Olympic Village press center.[49] However, journalists that
arrived at the press center after its opening on 25 July found that sites containing politically
sensitive matter were inaccessible and learned that the IOC had quietly agreed to "some of
the limitations."[49] IOC press chief Kevan Gosperadmitted that, "I regret that it now
appears BOCOG has announced that there will be limitations on Web site access during
Games time. I also now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that
some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games
related."[50] Foreign media was not informed about this private agreement, and IOC press
chief Kevan Gosperapologized to journalists for giving the impression that Internet access
during the Olympics would be completely unrestricted. Furthermore, on 31 July 2008, the
BOCOG Chinese spokesman, Sun Weide, indicated that the media will have "convenient and
sufficient" access to the Internet.[49] However, he also said that the government won't allow
the spread of any information on the internet that is forbidden by Chinese law or harms
national interests.[51] China had unblocked access to some Internet Web sites, including non-
politically sensitive parts of English Wikipedia, after the IOC protested that ongoing blocking
"would reflect very poorly" on the host nation; [52] subsequently, the Technology Ministry said
that there would continue to be controls, and it was unclear what the final list of prohibited
sites would be.[53]

Partial censorship

The censorship at the press center added to a growing skepticism about the claims of the
government that it would improve its record on human rights.[49] The "broken promise" was
condemned by Reporters Without Borders who pointed out that about 20,000 foreign
journalists would be directly affected.[54] A pre-Olympics crackdown by the China Internet
Illegal Information Reporting Centre on “illicit” websites, temporarily shut down
Qingdaonews.com, 21CN, Sichuan online, Shenzhen online, Tom online, and cjn.cn. [55] Some
websites and blogs with politically sensitive content, such as bulletin board services on
tecn.cn and Xici.net, have been blocked.[55]
On 1 August 2008, Reuters reported that Internet restrictions would be lifted for reporters
covering the Olympics.[56] Beginning 1 August, in response to international criticism, some
previously-blocked websites became accessible, including Human Rights
Watch and Amnesty International. Many websites related to Falun Gong and Tibet remained
blocked. The BBC's Chinese-language site was intermittently accessible and blocked. As of 5
August, the BBC's English website previously barred, remain open, if slow to load – as does
the Hong Kong-based Apple Daily.  However the Chinese version was blocked again in
December 2008.

Reporters Without Borders subsequently confirmed that its website, except for the Chinese
version, was accessible for the first time in China since 2003. The Chinese version of the
website is still blocked. While some previously-censored foreign websites were accessible
during the Olympics, Reporters without Borders claims that there has been increased
restriction of domestic websites and online activity, including the popular internet chatting
service "QQ".[ On 2 August 2008, the Associated Press reported that although Chinese
organizers unblocked some sites at the request of the IOC, others remained censored for
journalists covering the Summer Games. Even though Chinese officials and high-ranking
IOC members have repeatedly said there would be no censorship on the Internet for
accredited journalists covering the games, many sites the Chinese government objects to, for
example, the spiritual movement Falun Gong, are blocked. The sites being blocked seem to
change daily. Some key words always draw blank screens. Sites that host thousands of blogs
are also routinely blocked.  As of 4 August, Human Rights in China and websites affiliated
with Tibetan independence and the outlawed spiritual movement Falun Gong, remained
inaccessible inside and outside of Olympic venues.

Access to Apple, Inc.'s online iTunes Store was blocked in China after it emerged that
Olympic athletes had been downloading a pro-Tibetan album in a subtle act of protest.
However, this action lasted only for a short time before it was revoked by the government.
The album, Songs for Tibet, was produced by a group called The Art of Peace Foundation,
and features 20 tracks from well-known singers and songwriters including Sting, Moby,
and Suzanne Vega.
Crackdown on Internet activists

In 2001, Wang Xiaoning and other Chinese activists were arrested and sentenced to 10 years
in prison for using a Yahoo email account to post anonymous writing to an Internet mailing
list, which Yahoo, after pressure from the Chinese government eventually blocked. However,
with the help of the World Organization for Human Rights, Wang and Shi Tao, another
online activist sued Yahoo, accusing the Internet provider of abetting the torture of pro-
democracy writers by providing information that allowed the Chinese government to identify
them.[63]

On 23 July 2008, the family of Liu Shaokun was notified that he had been sentenced to one
year re-education through labor for “inciting a disturbance”. A teacher in Sichuan province,
he had taken photographs of collapsed schools and posted these photos online.[64]

On 18 July 2008, Huang Qi was formally arrested on suspicion of illegally possessing state
secrets. Huang had spoken with the foreign press and posted information on his website about
the plight of parents who had lost children in collapsed schools.[65]

Locking data centres

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of

China ordered all ISPs to lock down their data centers from 1–25 August 2008. [66] During this
time no one could enter data centers to do maintenance. Sites with illegal information were
blocked automatically. Authorities stated it was to ensure data security, to prevent hostile
personnel from entering data centers and adding illegal information.[66]
ISP/IDCs have sent "lockdown notices" to customers. [67]
Companies have received orders stating that from 1–25 August 2008:

1. Customers will not be able to enter data centers.

2. Customers will not able to add new hardware.
3. Any sites with illegal information will be blocked automatically, and site owners will
not be able to request unblocking as they normally can.

In customers' interests, companies have suggested:

1. Customers should manage their sites carefully. Forums mediators should check any
new posts before publishing, and customers should shut down all interactive services
including forums, because sites will be blocked if customers fail to filter out illegal
information.
 2. Avoid maintenance.
3. Reduce promotions.
4. Contact the company as soon as possible if a customer wants to add new hardware.
Self-censorship

Internet censorship in the PRC has been called "a panopticon that encourages self-

censorship through the perception that users are being watched."[16] The enforcement (or
threat of enforcement) of censorship creates a chilling effect where individuals and
businesses willingly censor their own communications to avoid legal and economic
repercussions. Professor Yantao BI reported on 30 October 2008 that some websites in
mainland China have already imposed the controversial true-name registration policy.

Search engines

One part of the block is to filter the search results of certain terms on Chinese search engines.
These Chinese search engines include both international ones (for
example, yahoo.com.cn and Google China) as well as domestic ones (for example, Baidu).
Attempting to search for censored keywords in these Chinese search engines will yield few or
no results. Previously, google.cn displayed the following at the bottom of the page:
"According to the local laws, regulations and policies, part of the searching result is not
shown." As was the case when searching for information about the 2011 uprising in Egypt.[68]

In addition, a connection containing intensive censored terms may also be closed by The
Great Firewall, and cannot be reestablished for several minutes. This affects all network
connections including HTTP and POP, but the reset is more likely to occur during searching.

Before the search engines censored themselves, many search engines had been blocked,
namely Google and AltaVista.[69] Technorati, a search engine for blogs, has been blocked.[70]

Different search engines implement the mandated censorship in different ways. For example,
the search engine Bing is reported to censor search results from searches conducted in
simplified Chinese characters (used in the PRC), but not in traditional Chinese characters
(used in Taiwan and elsewhere).[71]

CERNET

Several Bulletin Board Systems in universities were closed down or restricted public access
since 2004, including the SMTH BBS and theYTHT BBS.
Local businesses

Although blocking foreign sites has received much attention in the West, this is actually only
a part of the PRC effort to censor the Internet. The ability to censor content providers within
mainland China is much more effective, as the ISPs and other service providers are restricting
customers' actions for fear of being found legally liable for customers' conduct. The service
providers have assumed an editorial role with regard to customer content, thus became
publishers, and legally responsible for libel and other torts committed by customers.

Although the government does not have the physical resources to monitor all Internet chat
rooms and forums, the threat of being shut down has caused Internet content providers to
employ internal staff, colloquially known as "big mamas", who stop and remove forum
comments which may be politically sensitive. In Shenzhen, these duties are partly taken over
by a pair of police-created cartoon characters, Jingjing and Chacha, who help extend the
online 'police presence' of the Shenzhen authorities. These cartoons spread across the nation
in 2007 reminding internet users that they are being watched and should avoid posting
'sensitive' or 'harmful' material on the internet.[10]

However, Internet content providers have adopted some counter-strategies. One is to post
politically sensitive stories and remove them only when the government complains. In the
hours or days in which the story is available online, people read it, and by the time the story
is taken down, the information is already public. One notable case in which this occurred was
in response to a school explosion in 2001, when local officials tried to suppress the fact the
explosion resulted from children illegally producing fireworks.[73] By the time local officials
forced the story to be removed from the Internet, the news had already been widely
disseminated.[citation needed]

In addition, Internet content providers often replace censored forum comments with white
space which allows the reader to know that comments critical of the authorities had been
submitted, and often to guess what they might have been.

In July 2007, the city of Xiamen announced it would ban anonymous online postings after
text messages and online communications were used to rally protests against a proposed
chemical plant in the city. Internet users will be required to provide proof of identity when
posting messages on the more than 100,000 Web sites registered in Xiamen.[74]

Some hotels in China are also advising internet users to obey local Chinese internet access
rules by leaving a list of internet rules and guidelines near the computers. These rules, among
other things, forbid linking to politically unacceptable messages, and inform internet users
that if they do, they will have to face legal consequences.[75]

In September 2007, some data centers were shut down indiscriminately for providing
interactive features such as blogs and forums. CBSreports an estimate that half the interactive
sites hosted in China were blocked.[76]

International corporations

One controversial issue is whether foreign companies should supply equipment to the PRC
government which may assist in the blocking of sites. Some[who?] argue that it is wrong for
companies to profit from censorship including restrictions on freedom of the press and
freedom of speech. Others[who?] argue that equipment being supplied- from companies such as
the American based Cisco Systems Inc.- is standard Internet infrastructure equipment and
that providing this sort of equipment actually aids the flow of information, and that the PRC
is fully able to create its own infrastructure without Western help. By contrast, human rights
advocates such as Human Rights Watch and media groups such as Reporters Without
Borders argue that if companies stopped contributing to the authorities' censorship efforts, the
government could be forced to change.

A similar dilemma is faced by foreign content providers such as Yahoo! (See Shi Tao for

more information[77]), AOL, and Skype who abide by PRC government wishes, including
having internal content monitors, in order to be able to operate within mainland China. Also,
in accordance with mainland Chinese laws, Microsoft began to censor the content of its blog
service Windows Live Spaces, arguing that continuing to provide Internet services is more
beneficial to the Chinese.[78] Michael Anti, a Chinese journalist whose blog on Windows Live
Spaces was removed by Microsoft, agreed that the Chinese are better off with Windows Live
Spaces than without it.[79]

The Chinese version of MySpace, launched in April 2007, has many censorship-related
differences from other international versions of the service. Discussion forums on topics such
as religion and politics are absent and a filtering system that prevents the posting of content
aboutTaiwan independence, the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, and other "inappropriate topics"
has been added.[80] Users are also given the ability to report the "misconduct" of other users
for offenses including "endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the
government, undermining national unity, spreading rumors or disturbing the social order."[81]
Additionally, reporters in the western media have also suggested that China's internet
censorship of foreign websites may also be a means of forcing mainland Chinese users to rely
on China's own e-commerce industry, thus self-insulating their economy from the dominance
of international corporations.[82]

Reactions

Legal action

On 9 May 2007, Mr. Yetaai ( 冬 劲 ) sued Shanghai Telecom, a sub-company of China

Telecom, because one of his sites[citation needed] was blocked from access in China. He then took a
series of steps including raising maintenance request and notarization. His lawsuit was
accepted by Pu Dong Court, Shanghai. Mr. Yetaai reported it through his online
diary (English). He also raised an item for online ticketing through an article on Digg.

Liberalization of sexually oriented content

Although restrictions on political information remain strong, several sexually oriented blogs
began appearing in early 2004. Women using the web aliases Muzi Mei ( 木 子 美 )
and Zhuying Qingtong (竹影青瞳) wrote online diaries of their sex lives and became minor
celebrities. This was widely reported and criticized in mainland Chinese news media, and
several of these bloggers' sites have since been blocked in China to this day. This coincided
with an artistic nude photography fad (including a self-published book by dancer Tang Jiali)
and the appearance of pictures of minimally clad women or even topless photos in a few
mainland Chinese newspapers, magazines and websites. Many dating and "adult chat" sites,
both Chinese and foreign, have been blocked. Some, however, continue to be accessible
although this appears to be due more to the Chinese government's ignorance of their
existence than any particular policy of leniency.[citation needed]

Corporate responsibility

On 7 November 2005 an alliance of investors and researchers representing 26 companies in

the U.S., Europe and Australia with over US $21 billion in joint assets announced that they
were urging businesses to protect freedom of expression and pledged to monitor technology
companies that do business in countries violating human rights, such as China. On 21
December 2005 the UN, OSCE and OAS special mandates on freedom of
expression called on Internet corporations to "work together ... to resist official attempts to
control or restrict use of the Internet." Google finally responded when attacked by hackers
rumoured to be hired by the Chinese government by threating to pull out of China
(Newsweek)

Technical efforts at breaking through

The firewall is largely ineffective at preventing the flow of information and is rather easily
circumvented by determined parties by using proxy servers outside the firewall.
[83]
 VPN and SSH connections to outside mainland China are not blocked, so circumventing
all of the censorship and monitoring features of the Great Firewall of China is trivial for those
who have these secure connection methods to computers outside mainland China available to
them.

Since free hosting blog services like Blogger and Wordpress.com frequently face blockage,

bloggers and webmasters aiming for an audience in China often debate merits of the various
paid hosting services.[citation needed]
 Some China-focused services explicitly offer to change a
blog's IP address within 30 minutes if it is blocked by the authorities.[84]

Psiphon is a software project designed by University of Toronto's Citizen Lab under the

direction of Professor Ronald Deibert, Director of the Citizen Lab. Psiphon is a
circumvention technology that works through social networks of trust and is designed to help
Internet users bypasscontent-filtering systems set up by governments.

"We're aiming at giving people access to sites like Wikipedia," a free, user-maintained online
encyclopedia, and other information and news sources, Michael Hull, psiphon's lead
engineer, told CBC News Online.[85]

The Tor website is blocked although the Tor network isn't, making Tor (in conjunction
with Privoxy) an effective tool for circumvention of the censorship controls if one can
acquire it.[citation needed] Tor maintains a public list of entry nodes, so the authorities could easily
block it if they had the inclination. According to the sections 6.4 and 7.9, Tor is vulnerable to
timing analysis by Chinese authorities, so it allows a breach of anonymity. [86] Thus for the
moment, Tor allows uncensored downloads and uploads, although no guarantee can be made
with regard to freedom from repercussions. Since 25 September 2009, about 80% of the
public relays are blocked by IP address and TCP port combination[87] but Tor users are still
connecting to the network through non-public relays (bridges).[88]

As an alternative to Tor, there are various HTTP/HTTPS Tunnel Services.

It was common in the past to use Google's cache feature to view blocked websites. However,
this feature of Google seems to be under some level of blocking, as access is now erratic and
does not work for blocked websites. Currently the block is mostly circumvented by using
proxy servers outside the firewall, and is not difficult to carry out for those determined to do
so. Some well-known proxy servers have also been blocked.

Some Chinese citizens used the Google mirror elgooG after China blocked Google.[89] It is
believed that elgooG survived the Great Firewall of China because the firewall operators
thought that elgooG was not a fully functional version of Google. [citation needed] (This information
is out of date, referring to an early blockade of Google in 2002)

There are several techniques (websites and programs) that may be used to browse blocked
sites. These include:

 Ultrareach
 Gollum
 picidae
 Freegate
 Garden and GTunnel by Garden Networks
Societal and cultural evasion

The Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures, initially a humorous hoax, has become a popular and

widespread internet meme in China.[90][91] These hoaxes, ten in number, reportedly originated
in response to increasingly pervasive and draconian online censorship and have become an
icon of citizens' resistance to censorship.[92][93]

The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television issued a directive on 30 March 2009

to highlight 31 categories of content prohibited online, including violence, pornography and
content which may "incite ethnic discrimination or undermine social stability". Many
netizens believe the instruction follows the official embarrassment over the "Grass Mud
Horse" and the "River Crab". Industry observers believe that the move was designed to stop
the spread of parodies or other comments on politically sensitive issues in the runup to the
anniversary of the 4 June Tiananmen Square protests.[94]